Cm XIV.] 1861—1871. 253 



light labour. I have been better lately, and working hard, but 

 my health is very indifferent. How is your health ? Believe 

 me, dear Bates, 



Yours very sincerely. 



1863. 



Although the battle* of Evolution was not yet won, the 

 growth of belief was undoubtedly rapid. So that, for instance, 

 Charles Kingsley could write to F. D. Maurice f : 



" The state of the scientific mind is most curious ; Darwin is 

 conquering everywhere, and rushing in like a flood, by the mere 

 force of truth and fact." 



The change did not proceed without a certain amount of 

 personal bitterness. My father wrote in February, 1863 : — 



*' What an accursed evil it is that there should be all this 

 quarrelling within what ought to be the peaceful realms of 

 science." 



I do not desire to keep alive the memories of dead quarrels, 

 but some of the burning questions of that day are too important 

 from the biographical point of view to be altogether omitted. 

 Of this sort is the history of Lyell's conversion to Evolution. 

 It led to no flaw in the friendship of the two men principally 

 concerned, but it shook and irritatod a number of smaller 

 people. Lyell was like the Mississippi in flood, and as he 

 changed his course, the dwellers on the banks were angered 

 and frightened by the general upsetting of landmarks. 



0. B. to J. D. Hooker. Down, Feb. 24 [1863]. 



My dear Hooker, — I am astonished at your note. I have 

 not seen the Athenaeum,], but I have sent for it, and may get it 

 to-morrow ; and will then say what I think. 



* Mr. Huxley was as usual active in guiding and stimulating the 

 growing tendency to tolerate or accept the views set forth in the Origin 

 of Species. He gave a series of lectures to working men at the School of 

 Mines in November, 1862. These were printed in 1863 from the 

 shorthand notes of Mr. May, as six little blue books, price 4d. each, 

 under the title, Our Knowledge of the Causes of Organic Nature. 



t Kingsley's Life, vol. ii. p. 171. 



X In the Antiquity of Man, first edition, p. 480, Lyell criticised some- 

 what severely Owen's account of the difference between the Human and 

 Simian brains. The number of the Athenaeum here referred to (1863, 

 p. 262) contains a reply by Professor Owen to Lyell's strictures. The 

 surprise expressed by my father was at the revival of a controversy which 



